thaiWitter

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thaiWitter Tour

thaiWitter is a Twitter client, just like other clients, it allows you to read through your timeline and post to Twitter, but...

What's special about thaiWitter?

It's a very simple client, but has a lot of features available through keyboard shortcuts. It has a plain but elegant look.

The user interface super smooth. thaiWitter has a lot of user interface animations, and they almost always work smoothly, even when there are hundreds (or even thousands) of tweets on the timeline. That's because thaiWitter uses its own animation library (which is designed to do only animations) and no other JavaScript frameworks.

It's easier to read. thaiWitter displays tweets in a more natural way. Newer tweets are displayed below the older ones, so you can read it from top to bottom, just like when you read books.

It has a lot of hidden features. You have to find it by yourself, but it makes thaiWitter looks nicer, but some of these features impacts the performance of the application (through heavy use of user interface effects and animation) so I try to keep the normal user interface clean by hiding these features. :)

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The Timeline

The timeline shows all the tweets in the selected timeline (friends timeline by default) since you start thaiWitter. There are many ways that you can navigate through the timeline.

Arrow keys. Pressing the [Up] arrow key selects the tweet above the currently selected tweet (highlighted in gray), and pressing the [Down] arrow key selects the tweet below the selected tweet (*).

Mouse wheels. Scrolling the mouse wheel does the same as arrow keys, but it will also scroll the timeline a bit.

[Page Up] moves up by 1 page, and [Page Down] moves down by 1 page. Pressing the [Home] button moves to the oldest tweet in the timeline, and pressing the [End] button moves to the newest tweet in the timeline.

Clicking on a status selects it. If you click on a URL, a hashtag, or a name, thaiWitter will follow the link and open it in your default browser (**).

* The up and down keys will not work if you have typed some text in the status update box. However, you can use Shift+Up and Shift+Down to move through the timeline when there are text in the update box.

** If thaiWitter is running in a web browser, and not in Prism, it will open the link in a new window.

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Highlights

Most statuses in the timeline are colored white (in fact it's very light gray), but sometimes you will see some items in the timeline colored differently.

Statuses colored in red are statuses that mentions your name.

Statuses colored in yellow are statuses that you have favorited.

Statuses colored in blue are statuses that are highlight because it contains some highlight keywords. Highlight keywords can be set in inside the more button.

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Posting Status Updates

Because thaiWitter is modeless, you can start typing your tweets right away. As soon as you type, thaiWitter automatically focus the status update box. After you type your tweet, press [Enter] to send your tweet.

thaiWitter will send your tweet, and will display a message if the status was updated successfully or not. The sending process is totally asynchronous, after you press enter you don't have to wait until it is sent.

If thaiWitter fails to update your status, for any reason, you can retry by pressing [Ctrl+Z] to recover the text and press [Enter] to send it again.

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Searching the Timeline

thaiWitter has the ability to search through the timeline.

To search, type the search phrase into the status update box, but don't press Enter yet! Instead, use these two keyboard shortcuts:

Find previous ([Ctrl+F]), this search the tweets above the selected tweet for the search phease.

Find next ([Ctrl+G]), this search the tweets below the selected tweet for the search phrase.

The search feature does not wrap around.

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The Toolbar and Title Bar

thaiWitter has a small toolbar, with 4 main buttons for important features and the rest are inside the more button. The underlined green character in each toolbar button means that that character is a keyboard shortcut.

The refresh button ([Ctrl+R]). When activated, refreshes the timeline at that moment. By default thaiWitter refreshes itself every 90 seconds, but this interval can be set from inside the more button.

The retweet button ([Ctrl+T]). When activated, puts the contents of the selected tweet, prepended by rt @username, into the status update box. This allows you to shorten the tweet, or add some comments before sending (*). Pressing [Enter] sends the tweet (**).

The reply button ([Ctrl+Y]). When activated, puts the username of the selected tweet into the status update box. When there is already some text in the box, the @reply tag will be put in front of that text. This allows you to reply to someone's tweet.

The fave button ([Ctrl+E]). When activated, favorites or unfavorites the selected tweet. Favorited tweets are highlighted in yellow.

The left part of the position indicator shows the position of the selected tweet, and the right part shows the number of tweets in the timeline.

The typing indicator shows the number of characters in the status update box until it reaches the 140 characters limit. Your tweet may be truncated or rejected by Twitter if it's longer than 140 characters.

The title bar shows the number of unread tweets. It also shows the number of unread mentions unread mentions if there are any. For instance, if I have 1 unread mentions in 300 unread tweets, it will read "(1! 300)". It also shows your username and some special marks if thaiWitter is not on a friends timeline.

* Please don't use retweet when you want to reply. Thanks! Oh, and when you add a comment, you can put something as a separator between the original text and your comment. I usually use the double slash (//) but that's just an example. So enjoy retweeting!

** If you have not modified the tweet (press enter right after Ctrl+T), thaiWitter will use the retweet API. However, thaiWitter will not use the retweet API for protected tweets, tweets originally posted by you, or direct messages. However you can retweet direct messages but it will be sent as normal status update. Additionally, thaiWitter will warn you when you try to retweet a direct message or a protected tweet!

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The More Button and Inside the More Button

When you click the more button, a popup will open. Inside the more button there will be several tabs.

The Options Tab

In the options tab you can configure thaiWitter. More options can be added in the future. To change the options, click on the selection box, and click on the wanted option.

Option	Description
Popup Notifications	Displays a popup notification when there are new updates or mentions. Popup notifications are available only when it is running in Prism.
Refresh Rate	You can control the interval between each auto-refresh from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
Refresh on Tweet	If on, thaiWitter will automatically refresh the timeline as soon as you send a new tweet.
Auto Login	If on, thaiWitter will automatically log you in.
Show Client	If on, thaiWitter will show the name of the client that send that tweet on the timeline.
Show In Reply To	If on, thaiWitter will show the name that that tweet replies to. You can click on it to see the tweet that this tweet refers to.
Auto Scroll	If on, the timeline will scroll to bottom after reload.
Use Retweet API	If on, thaiWitter will use the retweet API for retweeting. This will work when you retweet a tweet unmodified. Retweet API is an API that allows you to share someone else's tweet to your followers.

The Help Tab

The help tab takes you to this page.

The About Tab

The about tab shows some information about thaiWitter.

The Clear Button (in Prism)

When you click the clear button, it clears the timeline, just like when you quit and reopen thaiWitter.

The Install Button (not in Prism)

When clicked, takes you to the installation page, which guides you through the installation process of thaiWitter.

The New Window Tab

Button	Description
New Mentions Window ([Ctrl+N])	Opens a new thaiWitter window showing mentions.
New DM. Window ([Ctrl+.])	Opens a new thaiWitter window showing direct messages.
New Favorites Window	Opens a new thaiWitter window showing your favorite tweets.
New Search Window	This button asks you for a search query, then opens a new thaiWitter window showing a search result of it.

The (There's Even) More Tab

Button	Description
Shorten URLs ([Ctrl+S])	Shortens the URLs found in the status update box using bit.ly's URL shortening service.
Upload Image ([Ctrl+I])	Opens a popup that lets you upload images, powered by yfrog (or imageshack). After your image has been uploaded, the URL to that image will be put on the status update box.
Edit Highlight Keywords ([Ctrl+H])	Opens a popup window letting you edit the highlight keywords. Statuses in the timeline that matches any of these keywords will be colored in blue.
Edit Exclude Keywords	Opens a popup window letting you edit the exclude keywords. Statuses in the timeline that matches any if these keywords will be hidden from the timeline.

 

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Editing Exclude Keywords

This section applies to the edit exclude keywords only and does not apply to edit highlight keywords.

Excluding a certain word is another feature in thaiWitter. You can use it to censor or hide certain tweets (for example you can choose to hide tweets about politics, or tweets that has certain hashtag). You can also hide tweets by source (for example you can hide tweets posted by twitterfeed or foursquare).

This section describes about its syntax.

Firstly, a blank string means to filter nothing. So if you use this filter:

­

...all tweets will be shown.

Then if you include some words, any tweets that matches that word will be hidden. For example, the following filter:

#tag1 #tag2

...hides the tweets that contains either #tag1 and #tag2.

hello world

...hides the tweets that contains either hello or world.

Hiding by source. You can hide tweets from certain sources by prefixing the keyword with source:. For example, this filter:

source:twitterfeed

...hides tweets from twitterfeed.

Hiding by user. Through you can hide tweets from certain user by unfollowing them, you can also use from:. For example:

from:thaiWitter

...hides tweets from @thaiWitter.

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More Features to Come!

Take a look at the changelog to see the latest changes to thaiWitter. It also shows the list of upcoming features.

If there are any features that you would like included on thaiWitter, please tell me, @dtinth, the creator of thaiWitter. If I like the idea, I will put it on the list, and then implement them someday.

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Keyboard Shortcuts Reference